Auto Repair Shop Marketing eGuide to Growing your Workshop
Growing your Workshop with Auto Repair Shop Marketing
The growth of digital media has made marketing much more complex. Knowing what auto repair shop marketing to do for your independent automotive workshop can be challenging without a high level of marketing expertise.
We see many businesses make costly mistakes with marketing. So, we have written this Auto Repair Shop Marketing eGuide to help you achieve more sustainable growth for your workshop.
The best approach to auto repair shop marketing
The best approach to auto repair shop marketing starts with a marketing plan which includes a range of digital and traditional marketing strategies, tactics and channels.
A marketing strategy is an overall plan to achieve your goals, and tactics are specific activities to support your business objectives, such as generating posts on social media. Facebook is an example of a marketing channel.
Some business owners go straight to investing in specific marketing channels (for example, updating their website, search engine optimisation or Facebook) to deliver faster results, but this isn’t the case.
A marketing plan customised to your budget will focus on the right combination of strategies and tactics for your auto repair workshop and deliver a better ROI.
One of the critical elements of a marketing plan is creating brand positioning and key messages for your auto repair workshop, differentiating you from competitors.
The fastest way to grow your business is to use these messages consistently across all your marketing. By doing this, you will build trust faster, and people will purchase sooner.
You can’t do it all from day one, but you can progressively build up your marketing assets over time, and this approach will deliver more sustainable long-term growth.
Common marketing mistakes
Here are three common marketing mistakes we see small businesses make:
1. 3% rule.
Only 3% of your market is looking to buy your type of service right now. It will also take many touchpoints for a person to remember and trust your brand.
We see many small businesses focussing their budget only on the 3% that are actively searching for their business now, and they miss out on 97% of their total market.
Buyers go through a marketing journey (awareness, interest, acquisition to loyalty). By influencing your target market at each stage, you attract and keep more customers.
2. Taking a shortcut.
Like building a successful business, marketing is not an overnight success. We see many companies trying to take shortcuts, which delivers a low return on investment.
We see some businesses changing their marketing strategy, tactics and channels every two to three months because they believe their marketing isn’t delivering a fast enough result.
Of course, we can always go for low hanging fruit and quick wins. But every time a business does changes their strategy, tactics or channels, they start the clock again. Marketing takes six to 12 months to generate a good result and up to 3 years to optimise your performance.
3. Insufficient marketing channels.
Successful marketing strategies include a range of channels. We see businesses focus on one marketing channel because they believe it will deliver immediate sales.
People research your services in a range of marketing channels (Google, social, local and family), so by investing in three to five channels, you will attract more customers.
Think of your dream car…let’s say it’s an Audi R8. Where have you seen that car? On a billboard? In an online advertisement; on Facebook, like product placement in a movie? On Instagram? These are all different marketing channels.
Investing in only one channel is risky. For example, if you invest in just Google and an algorithm change occurs or an issue with your website, your phone can stop ringing overnight.
The same can be said for Facebook. If you accidentally violate their rules, they can shut down your Facebook page overnight.
Nine tips to successful Auto Repair Shop Marketing.
At Sustainable Marketing Services, our marketing consultants have over 25 years of experience creating successful marketing plans that build reputations, boost brand visibility and achieve sustainable growth.
Based on our experience working for auto repair shops, we provide nine tips on the best auto repair shop marketing activities for your workshop.
1. Reputation
People buy from brands they trust.
Consumers book their cars into dealer groups because they trust these brands. An independent auto repair shop can deliver a better-quality repair or service and more personalised customer service. Still, without a trusted and known brand, they will miss out on work.
Branding goes beyond a professional logo. It is critical your brand story and supporting key messages explain what your customers value most about your brand and why it is different. So, start with the brand positioning for your workshop.
2. Mobile-friendly website
People will assess your business by visiting your website.
Your website is your digital shopfront. It needs to bring your brand story to life and explain why they should bring their car to you. Some of the essentials include:
- Navigation: about us, services, brands, blogs, FAQs and contact
- Responsive design, SSL certificate (for security) and fast hosting
- Photos of you, your team and close-ups of work on cars
- Blog articles to share tips and support SEO
- Google reviews and testimonials
Building a website that gets your phone ringing requires a diverse set of skillsets from technical website building, graphic design, branding, marketing strategy, digital marketing and marketing communications.
Success factors to increasing the visibility of your website
There are success factors to increasing the visibility of your website:
- Appearing on Google’s first page when people Google your type of service – learn how people search
- Making it easy for Google to find and search your site
- A design that is consistent with your brand
- Navigation that makes it easy to find information
- Great content that influences people to buy your services
- Reliable hosting with sufficient backups
- Keeping the CMS software up to date
The marketing communications need to explain your brand story, what you do well, why you are different, and answer any common questions they may have.
When writing the marketing communications for your website, it is essential to include some basic keywords to improve your visibility in Google searches.
Choose a reliable and fast web hosting supplier. Google penalises websites using poor-quality hosting. If your site loads slowly, people will leave and go to a competitor.
3. SEO to promote your website
Consumers research your services online, so your workshop needs to be found in search.
Search engine optimisation involves adding keywords to your website, adding your business to online directories and setting up a Google Analytics Account and Webmaster tools.
You can start with a simple SEO setup and include keywords in your copy, or you make an ongoing investment to ramp up SEO to drive even more calls.
4. Google My Business
Consumers will search using terms like “auto repair [suburb name]” or “auto repair near me”.
Google My Business (GMB) is an important digital channel for auto repair workshops. It’s a cost-effective way to promote your business to people searching in your local area.
Hire a Google local expert to do local SEO (citations), which will help your GMB profile come up in a local search for terms such as “mechanic Brisbane” or “mechanic near me”.
We also recommend doing weekly posts on your Google My Business profile, as this will build trust faster and encourage more potential customers to call your workshop sooner.
People read Google My Business reviews about workshops. Therefore, asking your customers for a Google review and responding to these reviews (good and bad) is critical.
5. Social Media
Not everyone in your target market is ready to buy from you now.
Build trust with the 97% who will need your services in the future. When they are ready to buy, they will already know and trust your brand, and you will be their preferred choice.
Social media is an excellent digital channel to elevate the visibility and trust in your brand. It is also a perfect way to stay connected and strengthen loyalty with existing customers.
Facebook, Instagram and YouTube talk to the 97% who will buy in the future and your existing customers.
Investing in social media will also increase the number of visitors who call you now after visiting your Google My Business profile to actively search for your type of services.
Some businesses just focus on the bottom of the sales funnel channels such as Google My Business because people using this channel are actively searching for a service now.
Using social media to influence people at the top of the funnel, you build relationships with your future customers and build your reputation and brand trust.
Almost 80% of the Australian population use social media (Statista 2021), with 56% using Facebook and 21% using Instagram. We recommend auto workshops start with Facebook and build up to Instagram and YouTube. (Source: Statista 2021)
Here are some suggestions on social media to get you started:
- Facebook: share tips on car care, videos and reviews, on new cars, testimonials, offers and information about your services
- YouTube: upload videos on YouTube and share on Facebook of your mechanics working on vehicles
- Instagram: share photos of cars being worked on and your team to promote the friendly work environment
Make sure the words and designs on your social media platform bring your brand story to life. The more consistent you are with your brand story, the faster you will grow your workshop.
6. Content Marketing
Content marketing is simply good marketing communication that provides valuable content which is helpful or enjoyable to your target customers.
Creating and sharing content marketing will build trust in your brand. Trust moves people through the marketing journey faster (awareness, interest, acquisition and loyalty). For example, it will get more people viewing your Google My Business profile to call you.
The types of content marketing relevant to an auto repair workshop are blogs on your website and videos or YouTube videos shared on your social channels such as Facebook.
Five reasons to write blogs for your website:
- Content marketing delivers three times more leads than promotional marketing, e.g., ads and costs 62% less
- Small businesses with blogs get 126% more leads than small businesses that do not use blogs
- Content marketing is a very effective SEO technique
- Adding blogs to websites give you 434% more search engine indexed pages than business websites that don’t publish content.
- Content marketing generates three times the leads per dollar spent than paid search
(Source: Content Marketing Institute)
Every quality blog that you create for your website strengthens the search potential for your website, reinforces your SEO strategy, increases visitors to your website and the number of people who call you to book a job.
7. Marketing Campaigns
Marketing campaigns are a great way to encourage existing customers to move their purchases forward and attract new customers to your auto repair workshop.
You need a special offer to entice people into your workshop, such as a discount, an extra service component included as a bonus, a gift they would value or a competition.
To maximise the return on your marketing investment, it is crucial that you promote the campaign in a range of marketing channels such as:
- Newsletters to your customers
- Facebook ads
- Facebook and Instagram posts
- Website banner and campaign webpages
- Small postcards to leave in local coffee shops
Traditional marketing such as postcards, flyers, and branded merchandise still work. Leave postcards and flyers promoting your campaign in local cafes and shops. Hand out branded merchandise to your customers, such as branded keyrings.
You can also use a Google Remarketing Ad to promote an ongoing offer to convert more people who visit your website. Google Remarketing Ads show a digital banner ad to visitors to your website to encourage them to come back and book a job. It can cost as little as $100-$150/month. It is much more affordable than Google Ads.
Good campaign topics include getting air conditioning checked for summer, getting tyres and batteries checked before winter, getting brakes checked and pre-holiday checks.
8. Newsletters
Newsletters are a cost-effective way to communicate with your existing customers.
It does require you to collect information from your customers, including first name, last name, email, phone, type of vehicle.
Use email marketing to send out welcome emails to new customers, share tips on car maintenance and education, and promote special offers.
Mailchimp is one of the most popular cloud-based email marketing solutions. It will also enable your customers to unsubscribe, which is a legal requirement.
9. Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs increase customer retention.
Customer retention is important as it is more cost-effective to make a small investment to retain existing customers than to attract new customers.
Here are a range of ways to strengthen loyalty with your existing customers:
- Give your customers a very personal service, so they feel valued
- Send out thank you notes to customers each year
- Give them discounts on your services to save them money
- Do follow-up phone calls to see if they are happy with your service
- Include a bonus service as part of their next full service
- Give them branded merchandise
- Run special events to celebrate
It is always more cost-effective to make a small investment in retaining your existing customers than attracting new customers.
How Sustainable Marketing can help with your auto repair marketing.
Sustainable Marketing can help you build your brand reputation, boost your visibility and achieve more sustainable growth.
Marketing requires a high level of expertise to achieve the best return on your investment. This is no different to your workshop; your team needs the expertise to deliver your services.
Our marketing professionals are qualified and have many years of experience working for auto repair workshops and auto distributors and manufacturers.
We understand what strategies, tactics, and channels will work best with your business, and we have proven performance in executing these activities well.
Our services range from marketing plans, digital strategies for new websites to implementing digital and traditional marketing to get your phone ringing.
We offer a FREE one-hour consultation in person to Brisbane based clients and Zoom consultations for everyone else.
Learn more about our auto repair shop marketing here.
Sustainable Marketing Services is an award-winning Brisbane digital marketing agency with a long history of delivering sustainable success for our clients.
Book a complimentary meeting on 07 3446 5837 or via email us here.